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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24093298">Ownership</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_blue_electricblue/pseuds/blue_blue_electricblue'>blue_blue_electricblue</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>unironic ironic elias/reader [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Choices, Depression, Devotion, Manipulation, Non-Sexual Submission, Other, Rest, Tattoos, a LOT of shit is happening in the world, and i would like to just, look SOMETIMES</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:49:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,183</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24093298</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_blue_electricblue/pseuds/blue_blue_electricblue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>You find out that you can't leave the Institute. You are, effectively, trapped here for as long as you live. </p>
<p>You react in a rather unexpected way.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elias Bouchard/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>unironic ironic elias/reader [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754923</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>131</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Ownership</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>sometimes,,,, when there's a pandemic on,,,, and i'm freaking out abt a million responsibilities,,, i would like to have someone tell me what to do</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“So we’re…” your throat clicks as you swallow, unable to finish.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re… we can’t leave this place. We’re bound to it,” Jon says to you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You take a shaky breath, feeling tears start to well in your eyes. “Okay.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jon looks at you sadly for a moment. “You don’t… you don’t have to be okay with this. If you need something, I—I understand that this isn’t something any of us signed up for, but—” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You laugh, though it sounds a little more like a sob. “Jon, no I’m—I’m fine, I. I’m not, I mean, but. I don’t want to talk about it. I just… I just wanna get back to work.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right,” Jon says. Then again, softer, “Right.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m—I mean, unless you have to. Unless you have something for me to do, I’m going to see Elias now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Jon asks gently.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” you admit. “But I’m going to do it anyway.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Alright,” Jon says. “Listen, I’m—sorry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Got nothing to be sorry for,” you mumble quietly to him. Then, before you can think better of it, you step forward and hug him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jon tenses for just a moment before sinking gratefully into your hug, and you just hold him for a minute.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right,” you finally say, taking a deep breath and pulling away from him. “I’ll go and see Elias now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good luck,” Jon says, and you know you’ll need it.</span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>“Is it true?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” Elias says, not even looking up. “All of it, I’m afraid. I’m your evil boss, I’ve killed two people that you’re aware of, and you can’t leave.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right,” you whisper.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His office is silent save for the sound of him typing away at his laptop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So you…” you say, and the hoarseness of your voice in the quiet startles you and you pause. Still, you want to know, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>need</span>
  </em>
  <span> to know even, and you continue, “So you… there’s no way for you to get rid of me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Elias peers over his laptop at you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, I could always kill you,” he says mildly. “But I tend not to enjoy doing that. You’re a perfectly good employee and I would hate to see you go.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay.” You’re whispering again and asking yourself what’s happening inside you that’s making your heart beat faster and tears spring to your eyes. You feel weak in the knees. You feel like you can’t breathe. You would call it a panic attack, but… </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You’d never felt a burst of joy in your heart from a panic attack before.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Elias raises his eyebrows at you. “Is that all?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” you say. “Sorry. I’ll be going now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Take the rest of the day off,” he says, waving a hand in the air before looking back to his laptop. “And tell the rest of the Archival staff they have the day off, as well. You’ve all been through a significant shock, I think, and you need time to acclimate.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And you leave the room, feeling shaky and terrified and, perhaps most damning of all, </span>
  <em>
    <span>relieved.</span>
  </em>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>You start to bring tea to Elias.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Martin has a monopoly on bringing tea to the archival staff, so that was right out. Jon is self-isolating. Tim and Melanie are stewing in fury. Basira is focusing on her own studies. Daisy… you think you’d rather not encounter Daisy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You find yourself alone, a lot of the time, and you would really rather not be alone, and so you spend a lot of time with Martin and pick up the habit of trying not to cry into his arms and making tea for people. But of course, Martin already makes tea for everyone, and he can’t be around all the time, and so you start to bring tea to Elias.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He thanks you for it and smiles, and you brace yourself whenever you leave his office because everyone else acts like extending human kindness to someone as evil as Elias is some sort of unforgivable sin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Usually you’d agree with them. Why help him? Why be kind? Why make any effort at civility to someone who is a monster, who has killed, who </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurt</span>
  </em>
  <span> people and will continue to do so?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Elias smiles at you and thanks you for the tea.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Why be kind to him?</span>
  </em>
  <span> you think.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Elias greets you in the morning pleasantly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Why be nice?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Why? Because you are bloody tired of hating people. Because it takes so much </span>
  <em>
    <span>effort</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be angry, because you are exhausted and scared and wrung out from working at this FUCKING job and you can’t leave anyway, so what is the point of being a dick when it can’t get you free and all it does is make you feel worse?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You take a few deep breaths.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You need to finish making Elias tea, because doing that is the only sense of purpose you feel anymore.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You’d gotten better at making tea, you think. Given it’s all you have energy to do, you do try to make it as best you can.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You’re careful as you walk up to his office with the cup in your hand. It wouldn’t do to spill it. Currently, this tea held the entirety of your mental energy inside of it, and if you spilled it, you might just start crying.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s no way for you to get rid of me.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You still don’t know why you asked him that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>(Elias smiles at you and thanks you. Elias greets you warmly.)</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s no way for you to get rid of me.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I would hate to see you go,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What the fuck is happening to you?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You don’t have to knock on the door when you get to Elias’s office because he just tells you to come in when he Knows you’re close enough, which is helpful, because it means you’re less likely to spill his tea.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You, as always, enter quietly and place the tea on his desk, far enough away from his work that there would be time to save it if it spilled, but close enough for him to reach.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looks up at you and smiles. “Thank you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looks back down at his computer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is the part where you leave.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Or, it would be, if you could move.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You’re stuck. You can’t stop staring at his hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you really…” you find yourself speaking without even realizing. “Do you…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You can’t say it. You don’t know what you’re trying to say, anyway.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Elias looks up at you for a moment before pushing away from his desk and standing. One of his hands falls on your shoulder and the other comes up under your chin, forcing you to look at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You belong to me,” he tells you, and your heart almost shatters with joy at the certainty in his voice. “There’s nothing you or I can do about it. It is… an immutable fact. You signed the contract. You joined the Institute. You’re mine, now. It’s almost more certain than even physical laws. You cannot leave.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That shouldn’t be comforting. You should not feel comforted by it. You shouldn’t want to crumble to your knees in bone-deep </span>
  <em>
    <span>relief,</span>
  </em>
  <span> you should be furious, you should fight, you should not give in like this.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you love me?” you ask.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Elias smiles. “No.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thank god,” you say, and you mean it, which is perhaps why Elias laughs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not a joke, though. You are so, so glad that he doesn’t love you. Love can change and shift and leave. But this? This… </span>
  <em>
    <span>ownership?</span>
  </em>
  <span> That is static and unchanging. That is permanent. You can hate it all you like, but it won’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>change</span>
  </em>
  <span> anything. Even if you lose friends, even if your house burns down, even if any number of insane, terrifying things happen to you, you will still belong in the Institute. That fact cannot change. Two and two will always equal four, the universal gravitational constant will always be 6.67x10</span>
  <span>-11</span>
  <span>, and you simply </span>
  <em>
    <span>belong</span>
  </em>
  <span> to Elias, and you always will. He doesn’t love you, and he might be fond of you, but it wouldn’t matter even if he wasn’t, because he’d still </span>
  <em>
    <span>have</span>
  </em>
  <span> you, and not even he can do anything about it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re a useful employee,” he says, sliding the hand under your chin up to your cheek. “I’m very proud of you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you want me to be in love with you?” you ask, and it is a genuine question; you don’t know why he would say such a thing if he didn’t want you to fall in love with him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It would be nice,” he says. “But it’s not necessary. You’re already mine, this is just a method of securing better loyalty.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay,” you find yourself replying.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Elias pulls away from you and sits back down. “Thank you again for the tea. I hope this conversation was… helpful for you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right,” you say. “Okay. Yes, of course. Thank you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And you leave the room.</span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>You’re at home, staring blankly at the TV screen, not absorbing any of it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You keep chewing on your thumb nail. You don’t want to be chewing on your thumb nail. You can’t seem to make yourself stop.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You should call Jon. See how he’s doing.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You don’t call Jon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You just keep staring at the TV screen and chewing on your thumb nail.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You </span>
  <em>
    <span>should</span>
  </em>
  <span> call Martin. He’d… well, he wouldn’t know what to do, but he might be able to talk to you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You don’t call Martin. It would be unfair to unload all of this on him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The eyes of the actors on TV seem to stare into you, they feel like they’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>judging</span>
  </em>
  <span> you. For what, you don’t know. Succumbing to authority? Finding comfort in the revocation of your autonomy? Falling in love despite knowing that it’s all just manipulation?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Chewing on your fucking thumb nail?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You look at your phone. It’s 21:25.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You make a choice.</span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>You don’t come into work the next morning. You feel sick for it, but it’s worth it.</span>
</p><hr/>
<p>
  <span>When you bring Elias tea the day you come back to work, he does a double-take. There’s a quick smile before he glances back down at his computer, and then he looks back up at you in shock before a grin spreads across his face. He stands up from his desk and walks around it to take the tea from your hands and place it on his desk, out of the way so he can look at you.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I was worried when you didn’t come in yesterday,” he says, though he doesn’t sound worried.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well,” you say. “I hope that… you understand why I didn’t, now.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I do, yes,” he murmurs, and his hand comes up around the back of your neck, and he doesn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>touch,</span>
  </em>
  <span> but his fingers hover </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> over newly-inked skin, tracing the shape of the eye that is now embedded in your skin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I wanted to…” you don’t really know how to express what you wanted. “I chose this.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Elias smiles at you. “I know you did.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, you don’t—” you sigh. “When I signed the employment contract, I chose this, but I didn’t—</span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> have a choice. It wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>informed</span>
  </em>
  <span> consent, even if it was consent. I—you didn’t give me the chance to choose it. So I wanted to…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You wanted to choose me,” he breathes out, smiling in a way that might have worried you two weeks ago but now only makes your heart beat faster. “Now that you know the risks, now that you </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span> everything, you wanted to make that choice. And you wanted to choose me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes,” you say, very quietly. “I want to choose you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He brings his hands to your face, cupping your cheeks, and kisses you on the forehead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Would you like to stay with me?” he murmurs into your hair.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, please,” you whisper, and you can feel tears start to form in your eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Would you like to kneel by my side as I work?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Yes.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Please.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come with me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He takes you around his desk and he sits in his chair and he puts you on your knees beside him. You’re so close to him, like this. His hand will come down and stroke your hair sometimes, and you can rest the side of your face against his thigh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sometimes the fingers in your hair will creep down until they reach the spot </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> above your new tattoo, and then they retreat up into your hair.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is the most peace you’ve felt in your entire life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re so good for me,” he says, low and kind. “An excellent devotee.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You bury your face into his thigh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The others would probably hate you for this. If any of them saw you like this, on your knees for Elias and </span>
  <em>
    <span>happy</span>
  </em>
  <span> about it, they would hate you. And you would probably deserve it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Elias runs his fingers through your hair again, and you decide you don’t care what the others think.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is all you could ever want.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>come say hi to me on <a href="https://twitter.com/bluezaffre">twitter</a>!!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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